I reached the floor and stopped myself with my hands. I planted my fingers in the sand.
Far above, the enormous glacier continued to move, swapping its crystal blue bottom with its weather-beaten top. Shards of ice twice the size of me rained down in a thunderous storm. But they stopped, floating, before they hit me. I was safe down here.
I cast my senses around. The only sign of life was those tiny glowing creatures.
“Lysi?”
The sound drifted into the void. I waited. An endless moment passed that might have been a minute or an hour. My pulse rattled in my eardrums.
The emptiness of the water hit me more than ever. All I sensed were moving currents and vast walls of ice, trapping me there with growing dread.
Should I try to find Lysi, or continue on? What would she do? I decided she would definitely try to find me. Then I doubted myself. Maybe she assumed I had swum to safety, or kept moving in the direction we’d been headed.
I waited in the intense pressure and darkness. Slowly, the chaos overhead subsided.
“Lysi?” I said again, if just to hear a voice.
Nothing. I turned, casting my senses carefully in each direction.
She probably wouldn’t have swum as deep as this—below the twilight layer. She would’ve been able to handle the current more easily.
I began to rise. Then I remembered Lysi telling me to go slowly when rising from depths like this, because depressurising quickly was painful.
I moved westward, rising gradually. No signs of life.
A knot of terror swelled in my heart, making it hard to think. No, Lysi would be all right. She’d always survived on her own, so this would be no different. I just had to find her.
By the time I made it to the surface and found myself still completely alone, I really began to panic. I considered doubling back. Could we have gotten that far from each other? Had she been flipped to the opposite side of the broken glacier, separated from me by a giant wall of ice? Or had she been crushed beneath the falling shards?
I shook my head, refusing to believe that.
“She’s fine,” I whispered. Lysi was a more agile and experienced swimmer than me. If I’d gotten away from the iceberg, so would she.
Even once I calmed the fear of what happened to Lysi, the idea of continuing alone was terrifying. I barely knew how to be a mermaid, never mind trying to survive the most extreme conditions as one.
Movement stirred ahead. My heart leapt. I jetted towards it—and stopped, cursing. It was a school of fish.
I chewed my lip, then made a decision. I would keep going. The school, at least, had a much larger presence than I did. If Lysi was nearby, there was a good chance she would feel the activity.
I approached the school from the side and made a wide arc like Lysi had taught me. I picked up my pace, expelling some breath so I created a vortex of bubbles that acted like a wall around the fish. They bunched tighter until they were a giant, swirling, silvery baitball.
I crossed my arms and admired my work, wishing Lysi could see my accomplishment. I glanced around.
Come on, Lysi. Where are you?
Lysi and I had barely eaten since being ejected from the Atlantic, and I was so far past the point of hunger that I was trembling. Or maybe it was from panic.
I watched the silvery swirl, debating whether I’d be able to hold down a meal. Then, in the distance, something else moved. I turned, concentrating on where it had come from. It was the right size to be a mermaid.
“Yes,” I breathed.
My heart pounded. I thought I felt an aura but couldn’t be sure. It could be a dolphin, for all I knew. Why was this so hard to sense? I wondered if transformed mermen and mermaids ever had control of their senses to the same extent as merpeople who were born with them, or if I was doomed to be subpar.
Whatever it was moved towards me. As it drew closer, I sensed a presence too complex to be an animal. It had to be a mermaid.
“Lysi?”
“Hello?” came the reply, and the male voice proved it was definitely not her. “Did you call me Lysi?”
